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The Vietnam war, a war against nature
As war continues in Ukraine and Palestine, ending lives and destroying landscapes, I remember another devastating conflict harming Nature at an unprecedented scale: the Vietnam War.
The chemical warfare along the Ho Chi Minh Trail and its consequence on the forest and human health have led lawyers to coin the term ‘ecocide’ in the 1970s. The intensive destruction of the environment during the conflict inspired lawyers to merge the word ‘ecosystem’ and ‘genocide’ together to symbolize the massive destruction of natural ecosystems.
Today, unlike the genocide and the crimes against humanity, ecocide is not recognized by the international law. Few nations who have known an event of ecocide have added it to their own penal code.
The mangrove wetlands and the luxuriant forests were a hostile environment to Americans. Not only did the Liberation Army of Vietnam also known as the Viet Cong’s attacks killed the GIs, but mosquitos, heat and tropical diseases increased the casualties. Nature was the ally of the Viet Cong and thus the enemy of the American. Nature provided a hide-out for the weaker side.
To eradicate its enemy, the US army targeted forests and Nature at an unprecedented scale. Between 1955 and 1975, the American military used about 13 million tons of explosives, 400,000 napalm strikes, 72 million…
